In 1954 he chaired the Watkins Committee, which led to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had made extensive allegations of communist infiltration of government and art groups.
[7] His orthodoxy and faith blurred the lines between civic and religious duties,[8] as can be seen in correspondence to the church general authorities written on April 13, 1954: The more I go into this Indian problem the more I am convinced that we have made some terrible mistakes in the past.
The Gospel should be a great stimulus and I am longing and praying for the time when the Indians will accept it in overwhelming numbers.While serving as a missionary in New York, Watkins met Andrea Rich.
After Watkins' election to the Senate in 1946, with increasing demand for municipal water and the need for irrigation of farmland, he began pushing for a reintroduction of legislation supporting the development plan.
Investigations were made in January 1948, leading to a report issued in July 1949 recommending creation of a reservoir to store surplus water from the Ogden and Weber rivers that could later be accessed for use on farmland.
677)[10] which empowered the United States Secretary of the Interior, through the Bureau of Reclamation "to construct, operate, and maintain reservoirs, irrigation and drainage works, power plants, and transmission lines in the area."
[13] Though his Mormon beliefs concerning Native Americans (see Lamanite) have been cited by many as a basis for the Indian termination policy Watkins pursued,[14][15][16][17] he was also influenced by not only his childhood growing up in the west on the fringe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation,[18][19] but also by various cultural movements at the time.
The "Culture of Conformity" –endless pressure to be stable and normal, and to fear the "godless Communist menace" – which characterized 1950s America, pushed society as a whole to relish the American sense of freedom, as well as responsibility.
[20][21] These values can clearly be seen in what Watkins called his policy, "the freeing of the Indian from wardship status," equating it with the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves during the Civil War.
The defining moment for Watkins' legislation came on August 1, 1953, with passage of House concurrent resolution 108, which made termination the federal government's ongoing policy and established the first thirteen tribes to be targeted.
[30] Watkins and his fellow legislators acted out of a belief that they needed to "fix the Indian problem" once and for all, and they believed that assimilation of the tribes into mainstream culture was their best hope for survival.
[31] At the time, many Indian tribes reacted against this proposed policy; in the afterword of her novel, The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich quotes from the letters of her grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, who served as the chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band Chippewa Advisory Committee.
"[32] The Menominee, led by Ada Deer regained Federal recognition, details described in her memoir, Making a Difference: My fight for Native Rights and Social Justice.
[37] Even the Osage Nation of Oklahoma was told by Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Dillon S. Myer, to prepare for termination and paying taxes because "'the best country in the world' needed financial support from all citizens to fight communists in North Korea".
Termination directly caused decay within the tribe including poverty, alcoholism, high suicide rates, low educational achievement, disintegration of the family, poor housing, high dropout rates from school, trafficking of Indian women for prostitution, disproportionate numbers in penal institutions, increased infant mortality, decreased life expectancy, and loss of identity.
The McCarran-Walter Act, which President Harry Truman's administration had just passed, was criticized not only internally, but throughout Europe as a policy which maintained systematic racial and religious discrimination and was hampering immigration based on hostility and distrust of outsiders, rampant fear of Communism, and unfounded security claims.
With the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower, rather than attempt to revise the McCarran Act, a decision was made to provide an emergency relief bill, which would be seen as a temporary program.
Given this information, Eisenhower stressed that no discrimination based on race, religion or origin would prohibit visa issuance and that priority would be given to those refugees who had skills that were needed in the U.S. or who were family members of U.S.
[48] Early in 1950, when Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin began his anti-communist purges, he found a lot of support from the public at large and his colleagues.
Aired on national television, McCarthy badgered witnesses, ignored common courtesies, subverted parliamentary procedure,[53] and negatively turned public opinion against himself and the government.
[56] The two charges they finally decided to bring related to his failure to attend the Subcommittee on Rules and Administration, which had called him to testify in 1951 and 1952, and his abuse of then-Brigadier General Ralph W. Zwicker in the Army hearings of 1954.
Following his defeat, Watkins was hired as consultant to Interior Secretary Fred Seaton, but left in 1960 to accept an appointment by Eisenhower on the Indian Claims Commission, becoming its chairman and subsequently its chief commissioner.